Francoise Bichard received an additional surprise in her GCSE results envelope, in the form of a letter from the OCR exam board congratulating her on her grade and her work.
‘I’d been warned that there would be something extra in there, which I thought would be bad, but opening it was really cool,’ she said.
‘I’ve always loved art since I was really young, doing the art activities at school. Then I took it at GCSE and so I was doing it a lot more and learning about other artists really inspired me to develop my own work more, which gave me motivation to do more.’
Her favourite piece is the one she submitted for her GCSE mock exam. She took inspiration from impressionist artists, and painted the background inspired by The Starry Night.
‘The whole piece, though, is based on self-acceptance and self-esteem because that’s something a lot of school-aged people struggle with and something I struggled with a lot, but learning to love yourself is what I wanted to capture in the piece,’ said Francoise.
For the final exam she did another self-portrait, which was bigger and focused on her passion for art.
‘I recycled a lot of old pens that I used in school because I like to draw using those and it relates back to the passion of art,’ she said.
She is now studying art at the Sixth Form Centre, alongside media studies and English literature.
‘We’ve only just started, but I’m already loving it. I’m really excited to have lots of tasks so I can do more art,’ she said.
Les Beaucamps art teacher Rob Sweeney said he was really pleased for Francoise.
‘Right from the word go she was putting so much into it at home,’ he said.
‘When we were marking all the work, the head came round and was amazed.
‘She’s super, super talented and her confidence has grown so much.’
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